This book consists almost entirely of legends or traditions of a varied
character, referring to places and buildings in Florence, such as the
Cathedral and Campanile, the Signoria, the Bargello, the different city
gates, ancient towers and bridges, palaces, crosses, and fountains, noted
corners, odd by-ways, and many churches. To all of these there are
tales, or at least anecdotes attached, which will be found as
entertaining to the general reader as they will be interesting, not to
say valuable, to the folklorist and the student of social history; but
here I must leave the work to speak for itself.
I originally intended that this should be entirely a collection of relics
of ancient mythology, with superstitions and sorceries, witchcraft and
incantations, or what may be called occult folk-lore, of which my work on
"Etruscan-Roman Remains in Popular Tradition" consists, and of which I
have enough additional material to make a large volume. But having
resolved to add to it local legends, and give them the preference, I
found that the latter so abounded, and were so easily collected by an
expert, that I was obliged to cast out my occult folk-lore, piece by
piece, if I ever hoped to get into the port of publication, according to
terms with the underwriters, following the principle laid down by the
illustrious Poggio, that in a storm the heaviest things must go overboard
first, he illustrating the idea with the story of the Florentine, who,
having heard this from the captain when at sea in a tempest, at once
threw his wife into the raging billows--_perche non haveva cosa piu grave
di lei_--because there was nought on earth which weighed on him so
heavily.
There are several very excellent and pleasant works on Old Florence, such
as that portion devoted to it in the "Cities of Central Italy," by A. J.
C. Hare; the "Walks about Florence," by the Sisters Horner; "Florentine
Life," by Scaife; and the more recent and admirable book by Leader Scott,
which are all--I say it advisedly--indispensable for those who would
really know something about a place which is unusually opulent in
ancient, adventurous, or artistic associations. My book is, however,
_entirely_ different from these, and all which are exclusively taken from
authentic records and books. My tales are, with a few exceptions,
derived directly or indirectly from the people themselves--having been
recorded in the local dialect--the exceptions being a few anecdotes racy
of the soil, taken from antique jest-books and such bygone halfpenny
literature as belonged to the multitude, and had its origin among them.
These I could not, indeed, well omit, as they every one refer to some
peculiar place in Florence. To these I must add several which remained
obscurely in my memory, but which I did not record at the time of hearing
or reading, not having then the intention of publishing such a book.
It has been well observed by Wordsworth that minor local legends sink
more deeply into the soul than greater histories, as is proved by the
fact that romantic folk-lore spreads far and wide over the world,
completely distancing in the race the records of mighty men and their
deeds. The magic of Washington Irving has cast over the Catskills and
the Hudson, by means of such tales, an indescribable fascination, even as
Scott made of all Scotland a fairyland; for it is indisputable that a
strange story, or one of wild or quaint adventure, or even of humour,
goes further to fix a place in our memory than anything else can do.
Therefore I have great hope that these fairy-tales of Florence, and
strange fables of its fountains, palaces, and public places--as they are
truly gathered from old wives, and bear in themselves unmistakable
evidences of antiquity--will be of real use in impressing on many
memories much which is worth retaining, and which would otherwise have
been forgotten.
The manner in which these stories were collected was as follows:--In the
year 1886 I made the acquaintance in Florence of a woman who was not only
skilled in fortune-telling, but who inherited as a family gift from
generations, skill in witchcraft--that is, a knowledge of mystical cures,
the relieving people who were bewitched, the making amulets, and who had
withal a memory stocked with a literally incredible number of tales and
names of spirits, with the invocations to them, and strange rites and
charms. She was a native of the Romagna Toscana, where there still lurks
in the recesses of the mountains much antique Etrusco-Roman heathenism,
though it is disappearing very rapidly. Maddalena--such was her
name--soon began to communicate to me all her lore. She could read and
write, but beyond this never gave the least indication of having opened a
book of any kind; albeit she had an immense library of folk-lore in her
brain. When she could not recall a tale or incantation, she would go
about among her extensive number of friends, and being perfectly familiar
with every dialect, whether Neapolitan, Bolognese, Florentine, or
Venetian, and the ways and manners of the poor, and especially of
witches, who are the great repositories of legends, became in time
wonderfully well skilled as a collector. Now, as the proverb says, "Take
a thief to catch a thief," so I found that to take a witch to catch
witches, or detect their secrets, was an infallible means to acquire the
arcana of sorcery. It was in this manner that I gathered a great part of
the lore given in my "Etruscan-Roman Remains." I however collected
enough, in all conscience, from other sources, and verified it all
sufficiently from classic writers, to fully test the honesty of my
authorities.
The witches in Italy form a class who are the repositories of all the
folk-lore; but, what is not at all generally known, they also keep as
strict secrets an _immense_ number of legends of their own, which have
nothing in common with the nursery or popular tales, such as are commonly
collected and published. The real witch-story is very often only a
frame, so to speak, the real picture within it being the _arcanum_ of a
long _scongiurazione_ or incantation, and what ingredients were used to
work the charm. I have given numbers of these real witch-tales in my
"Etruscan-Roman Remains," and a few, such as "Orpheus and Eurydice,"
"Intialo," and "Il Moschone," in this work.
Lady Vere de Vere, who has investigated witchcraft as it exists in the
Italian Tyrol, in an admirable article in _La Rivista_ of Rome (June
1894)--which article has the only demerit of being too brief--tells us
that "the Community of Italian Witches is regulated by laws, traditions,
and customs of the most secret kind, possessing special recipes for
sorcery," which is perfectly true. Having been free of the community for
years, I can speak from experience. The more occult and singular of
their secrets are naturally not of a nature to be published, any more
than are those of the Voodoos. Some of the milder sort may be found in
the story of the "Moscone, or Great Fly," in this work. The great secret
for scholars is, however, that these pagans and heretics, who are the
last who cling to a heathen creed out-worn in Europe--these outcast
children of the Cainites, Ultra-Taborites, and similar ancient
worshippers of the devil, are really the ones who possess the most
valuable stores of folk-lore, that is to say, such as illustrate the
first origins of the religious Idea, its development, and specially the
evolution of the Opposition or Protestant principle.
As regards the many legends in this book which do not illustrate such
serious research, it is but natural that witches, who love and live in
the Curious, should have preserved more even of them than other people,
and it was accordingly among her colleagues of the mystic spell that
Maddalena found tales which would have been long sought for elsewhere, of
which this book is a most convincing proof in itself; for while I had
resolved on second thought to make it one of simple local tales, there
still hangs over most--even of these--a dim, unholy air of sorcery, a
witch _aura_, a lurid light, a something eerie and uncanny, a restless
hankering for the broom and the supernatural. Those tales are
Maddalena's every line--I pray thee, reader, not to make them mine. The
spirit will always speak.
Very different, indeed, from these are the contributions of Marietta
Pery, the _improvvisatrice_, though even she in good faith, and not for
fun, had a horseshoe for luck; which, however, being of an artistic turn,
she had elegantly gilded, and also, like a true Italian, wore an amulet.
She, too, knew many fairy tales, but they were chiefly such as may be
found among the _Racconti delle Fate_, and the variants which are now so
liberally published. She had, however, a rare, I may almost say a
refined, taste in these, as the poems which I have given indicate.
I must also express my obligations to Miss Roma Lister, a lady born in
Italy of English parentage, who is an accomplished folk-lorist and
collector, as was shown by her paper on the _Legends of the Castelli
Romani_, read at the first meeting of the Italian Folk-Lore Society,
founded by Count Angelo de Gubernatis, the learned and accomplished
Oriental scholar, and editor of _La Rivista_. I would here say that her
researches in the vicinity of Rome have gone far to corroborate what I
published in the "Etruscan-Roman Remains." I must also thank Miss Teresa
Wyndham for sundry kind assistances, when I was ill in Siena.
There is no city in the world where, within such narrow limit, Art,
Nature, and History have done so much to make a place beautiful and
interesting as Florence. It is one where we feel that there has been
vivid and varied _life_--life such as was led by Benvenuto Cellini and a
thousand like him--and we long more than elsewhere to enter into it, and
know how those men in quaint and picturesque garb thought and felt four
hundred years ago. Now, as at the present day politics and news do not
enter into our habits of thought more than goblins, spirits of fountains
and bridges, legends of palaces and towers, and quaint jests of friar or
squire, did into those of the olden time, I cannot help believing that
this book will be not only entertaining, but useful to all who would
study the spirit of history thoroughly. The folk-lore of the future has
a far higher mission than has as yet been dreamed for it; it is destined
to revive for us the inner sentiment or habitual and peculiar life of man
as he was in the olden time more perfectly than it has been achieved by
fiction. This will be done by bringing before the reader the facts or
_phenomena_ of that life itself in more vivid and familiar form.
Admitting this, the reader can hardly fail to see that the writer who
gathers up with pains whatever he can collect of such materials as this
book contains does at least some slight service to Science.
And to conclude--with the thing to which I would specially call
attention--I distinctly state that (as will be very evident to the
critical reader) there are in this book, especially in the second series,
which I hope to bring out later, certain tales, or anecdotes, or jests,
which are either based on a very slight foundation of tradition--often a
mere hint--or have been so "written up" by a runaway pen--and mine is an
"awful bolter"--that the second-rate folk-lorist, whose forte consists
not in finding facts but faults, may say in truth, as one of his kind did
in America: "Mr. Leland is throughout inaccurate." In these numerous
instances, which are only "folk-lore" run wild, as Rip Van Winkle, Sleepy
Hollow, and Heine's Gods in Exile are legend, I have, I hope, preserved a
certain _spirit_ of truth, though I have _sans mercy_ sacrificed the
letter, even as the redcap goblins, which haunt old houses, are said to
be the ghosts of infants sacrificed by witches, or slain by their
mothers, in order to make _folletti_ or imps of them.
Now as for this reconstructing Hercules from a foot, instead of giving
the fragment, at which few would have glanced, the success consists in
the skill attained, and the approbation of the reader. And with this
frank admission, that in a certain number of these tales the utmost
liberty has been taken, I conclude.